Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World

(Paperback)

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Description

In the early eighteenth century, Edinburgh was a fi lthy backwater town synonymous with poverty and disease. Yet by the century's end, it had become the marvel of modern Europe, home to some of the fi nest minds of the day and the scene of breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, economics, science and the arts. Pioneers such as David Hume, Robert Burns, James Hutton, Adam Smith and Sir Walter Scott transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, industry and trade, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence. In this acclaimed book, James Buchan beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of an historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision changed it utterly.

Reviews

'A triumph of fact-based, imaginatively expressed writing' - Magnus Magnusson 'Buchan's confident and astringent study is based on an informed love of Scotland and its stories are told to excellent effect' - Daily Telegraph '[An] elegant portrait of Edinburgh in the age of Enlightenment' - Times Literary Supplement 'As Buchan says in this marvellous book, "there is no city like Edinburgh in all the world"' - Sunday Times

Author Bio

James Buchan is a novelist and critic. He is the author of the Persian Bride, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as Frozen Desire, an examination of money that received the Duff Cooper Prize. He has also won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Buchan is a contributor to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Observer, and a former correspondent for the Financial Times. He lives in Norfolk, England.